The Art of not Listening or being Mentally Absent. . .

Sunday, March 28, 2010
Hiba Moeen
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A few days back a friend of mine, Mehr Azeem shared a video on Face Book that reminded of some interesting school memories. Well, school memories are always pleasant and tend to make people nostalgic as well, for many things I'm sure . . . nothing would ever get as wonderful again as school life.

So what I actually got reminded of were my Maths and Physics class. It is about when I was in class IX and we had our new Physics teacher who had shown signs of a good memory in terms of learning students' names and well . . . he had another habit . . . asking questions from the previous lecture. I used to make sure that if I get to sit in the bus, the first thing to do was to open up my Physics register and revise once again if not for knowledge for self respect at least.

I do have a habit of at times being physically present but getting mentally lost. That day during our Physics class we were discussing 'Momentum' and I was lost. He asked me a question and I replied, 'Momentum' perceiving his question to be about the topic of the question. To my surprise everybody started laughing and I didn't know why. "I just asked you your name and you said Momentum !" he replied with his amused expression. Well how lame of me was it to think that I was being asked the topic of the question.

Then again in class X with just another year of school to go there was another incident. Our Maths teacher had just entered the class and asked whether we had done a particular question in the previous class and I replied, "No !" I was the only one who had said no and everybody else was quiet because a part from his excellent teaching capability he was a dangerous and difficult teacher. "Ok if you don't want to do the question we won't do it," he said. The very instance my friend told me that our teacher had just said that we are going to do a particular question. I immediately clarified my situation. "Sir I thought you asked us whether we have done this question."

My goodness ! Why at times do I become deaf all of a sudden knowing the fact that I am always attentive in classes? Now we have three hour classes to make things more exciting! But at times the energy saver (me) runs out of electricity paving way to such moments. Now when I ponder over my past I can't stop laughing at these situations that are a part of my life and I would never forget them. Nothing is like school anymore . . . those 11 years of school were the best years of my life . . . =)

So I was talking about the Face Book video that Mehr shared . . . It about a prospective student who despite having all senses with proper functionality fails to use his eyes properly and becomes a victim of self induced problem. It's called 'Prospective Student' , Have a look: